Auto Suggestions are available once you type at least 3 letters. Use up arrow (for mozilla firefox browser alt+up arrow) and down arrow (for mozilla firefox browser alt+down arrow) to review and enter to select.

Overview

Luke Haines has been honing his signature amalgam of wry, Dickensian Brit-pop, righteous pub folk, and gadfly art rock since the early 1990s with bands like the Auteurs, Black Box Recorder, and Baader Meinhof. Is Alive & Well & Living in Buenos Aires: Heavy Frenz the Solo Anthology 2001-2017 dispenses with that era in favor of an exhaustive dissection of the English eccentric's prolific solo career, which began in 2001 when he was commissioned to write the soundtrack for the cult film Christie Malry's Own Double-Entry. The four-part set is comprised of a generous 80 tracks culled from Haines' bumper crop of solo outings, with the fourth installment providing the biggest carrot on a stick, as it consists entirely of unreleased material -- with predictably amusing sleeve notes from the artist himself. Haines could probably benefit from a more streamlined and concise collection of his work, but he's shown little interest in brevity over the years, and all of the best moments from his post-band career are here. Heavy, Frenz, like most of his studio albums, is simultaneously difficult, thrilling, ponderous, and compelling. Longtime fans will find plenty of grist for the mill, but for the uninitiated, Haines will likely remain a singular but elusive character, which is probably exactly the way he likes it.

After a grueling international touring schedule over the course of three years in support of
his first two solo albums, 2013's The Messenger and 2014's Playland, former Smiths guitarist/songwriter (who has become a legendary guitarist/singer/songwriter), Johnny Marr compiled this 17-track ...

The first minute's crescendo of pizzicato strings suggests the arrival of something totally different. A
quirky horn melody enters, and then the unmistakable Lennonesque whine of Andy Partridge reassures us that -- seven years since the last album and despite ...

The Jasmine Minks weren't one of Creation's better-known bands, certainly not one of the groups
one would associate with the label on first thought. That being said, they crafted one of the label's earliest pop triumphs with the 1984 single ...

Months after the release of the harrowing The Holy Bible, Manic Street Preachers guitarist Richey
James disappeared, leaving no trace of his whereabouts or his well-being. Ultimately, the remaining trio decided to carry on, releasing their fourth album, Everything Must ...

For years, the easy point of comparison for Muse and their brand of driving rock
was Radiohead, but as the trio has grown, it became clearer and clearer that the sound they were really striving for was something akin to ...

On the heels of Soundgarden's 2010 reunion, which included a retrospective released in time for
that year's holidays, the group dug their scrapped 1996 live album out of the vault and prepped it for release as 2011's Live on I-5. ...

One of the lost treasures of '80s rock, this is a rousingly melodic set of
jangly guitar tunes reflecting the charms and foibles of modern-day England, with zany sound bites à la Monty Python linking the tracks. Ilya Kuryakin Looked ...

The soundtrack to the edgy Tarantino-esque British film Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels consists
largely of vintage punk rock (the Stooges' I Wanna Be Your Dog), R&B (James Brown's The Boss and The Payback), and reggae (Junior Murvin's Police ...